Artist Abhishek Chaudhary

Abhishek Chaudhary is an experimental, mixed media and collage artist based in New Delhi and he is but a nasty modem router teething on glorified images from the past to shake the present. His work explores the digital world, Internet aesthetics, gender, popular culture and re-contextualizing classical works of art/popular cultural references. His voice is witty, observant and is not scared to be provocative. There is always constant questioning, negotiation and understanding of our world right now.

Abhishek's work was recently featured alongwith other experimental artists at Galleries Lafayette, Paris and is also a part of the Wrong Digital Art Biennale 2013. More of his work, interests and interactions happen on his Tumblr, www.rangeenmakhee.tumblr.com.

Drop by.

Artist Sarnath Banerjee | Berlin series

Sarnath Banerjee from India paints a very different picture of Berlin for his readers back home. He produces comic strips on life in the German capital for publication in an Indian daily. To him, Berlin is a fascinating metropolis full of contradictions. His intriguing graphic novels tell the story.

Hema Upadhyay | STUDIO LA CITTA

Studio la Città presents the one man show of the Indian artist Hema Upadhyay. With new works including a large installation and wall pieces.

10th December

Opening at 11:30 a.m.

source --

http://www.studiolacitta.it/English/#ajax4

OUT OF PRINT | Indie Webzine

Out of Print is an online platform for writers of short fiction with a connection to the Indian subcontinent. The traditions of story-telling layer their collective contemporary voice. If you would like to share your stories visit -- http://outofprintmagazine.co.in

Livithian | Sculpture by Anish Kapoor

Livithian, a giant art structure by British artist Anish Kapoor, is unveiled in Paris' Grand Palais ahead of an exhibition which opens next Wednesday.

'Maximum India' | at Kennedy Center

Sights, sounds and scents of India at Kennedy Center

Before the opening of the three-week Indian festival, the curator, designer and executive chef of Maximum India describe what can be seen and eaten at the Kennedy Center. (Madeline Marshall/The Washington Post)

March 1-20, 2011
John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
India is home to a million art forms, both traditional and modern. maximum India brings you perhaps not a million, but many wonderful and unusual aspects of the country's diverse arts and culture, from folkloric to classical and contemporary. It will surprise and delight you with dance, music, and theater performed by India's most acclaimed artists. Film selections from the world's most robust movie industry, featuring both indie and Bollywood films; prize-winning authors reading, debating, conversing, and sharing their insights; exhibitions that astonish and confront; incredible and unimaginable crafts from exquisite collections; jewels that dazzle from the princely era of the Mughals and Maharajas. And, to top it all, feasts of Indian food for the entire three-week period of the festival, prepared by 12 world-class, award-winning Indian chefs, representing all regions of the country.

Jitish Kallat discusses 'Public Notice 3' | Art Institute of Chicago

Jitish Kallat and curator Madhuvanti Ghose discuss the first major presentation in an American museum of the contemporary Indian artist's work, a site-specific installation that calls attention to the chasm between two very different events of September 11—the landmark 1893 speech by Swami Vivekananda promoting religious tolerance and the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001.

Source - Art Institute of Chicago

PUBLIC NOTICE 3 | Jitish Kallat at ARTIC

'PUBLIC NOTICE 3'
ON THE ART INSTITUTE’S GRAND STAIRCASE
September 11, 2010 through January 2, 2011


Public Notice 3, a site-specific installation, brings together two key historical moments: the first Parliament of the World’s Religions, opening on September 11, 1893, in what is now the museum’s Fullerton Hall, and the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon 108 years later, on that very date.

In 1893, during the World's Columbian Exposition, the museum's building served as the site of one of the most important gatherings in the history of modern religion, the first World’s Parliament of Religions. One of the opening speakers was a young Hindu monk from India, Swami Vivekananda, who stunned and enthralled the audience of 7,000 with an address that opened one of the first dialogues between Eastern and Western traditions and, importantly, argued passionately for universalism and religious tolerance. Exactly 108 years before the attacks in New York City and Washington, DC, Swami Vivekananda called for an end to all “bigotry and fanaticism” and pleaded for brotherhood across all faiths, a speech that was met with a standing ovation and was heralded by journalists as one of the pivotal moments of the Exposition. (Even today, the stretch of Michigan Avenue in front of the Art Institute is the honorary “Swami Vivekananda Way.”)

Kallat has chosen this historical event as the basis and site for his monumental installation. For Public Notice 3, Kallat will convert the complete text of Vivekananda’s inspiring speech into LED displays on each of the 118 risers of the museum’s Woman’s Board Grand Staircase, which is itself adjacent to what is now Fullerton Hall, where Vivekananda made his original presentation. Drawing attention to the great chasm between this plea for tolerance of 1893 and the very different events of September 11, 2001, the text of the speech will be displayed in the five colors of the United States’ Department of Homeland Security alert system—red, orange, yellow, blue, and green.

This historical coincidence—and the fact that the speech was delivered at the earliest attempt to create a global dialogue of faiths—heightens the potency of Vivekananda’s persuasive words. The resulting work, Public Notice 3, creates a trenchant commentary on the evolution, or devolution, of religious tolerance across the 20th and 21st centuries. The installation will serve not as a passive commemorative act but rather as an actively contemplative space.

Skulptur i Pilane | Jitish Kallat in Sweden

Sudarshan Shetty debuts at Vancouver Biennale | History of Loss

Media : Plexiglass, aluminum, steel

The casts of model aluminum Volkswagen Beetle cars are displayed in clear plexiglass boxes stacked in repeated rows, each marked with a date. The replicas are miniature, mimicking children's toy cars, a reference to a childlike desire, and nostalgic memory. Shetty diligently cast each individual car, identical, perfect and pristine, and then deliberately dropped them one by one from around 300 feet with the sole purpose to damage each one, thereby making each one individualistic.

Shetty describes his process: "The cars were manually smashed by me after being cast from a single mould, thereby representing the notion of their possible crash as an event. The dates on the vestibules represent the dates of possible crashes, but they really represent the dates to the deadline that I had in which to complete the work, which was completed in 42 days." Shetty's piece draws attention to the environment damage caused by the combustion engine by placing each vehicle into a coffin-like box, on display as a museum relic or artifact.

Sudarshan Shetty is part of a growing number of young contemporary Indian artists who are garnering international attention for work that breaks with traditional religious iconography, or uses it in new ways. Shetty makes his Canadian debut in the 2009-2011 Vancouver Biennale.

Image Courtesy - Chris Huggins & Google

Indian Art Shows | Global & Local

Here are some of the Indian Contemporary Art Shows to look out for that are currently showing either in your town or around you.

Specially selected for MASI followers & art aficionados!

If you happen to be at the event please share your reviews, thoughts, opinions, pictures etc with MASI-ji.

Anish Kapoor's Spectacular Artwork for London 2012

Designs for what will be Britain's biggest piece of public art, a 120 metres tall looping tower by the artist Anish Kapoor that people will be able to climb, giving spectacular views of London. The structure will officially be called the ArcelorMittal Orbit, after steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, the richest man in Europe, who is funding it.

The structure will cost about £19.1m.

Kapoor said one of his references was the Tower of Babel. "There is a kind of medieval sense to it of reaching up to the sky, building the impossible. A procession, if you like. It's a long winding spiral: a folly that aspires to go even above the clouds and has something mythic about it."

Source -Guardian

Jitish Kallat: Perspectives on Modern Indian Art

Contemplating The Void | Anish Kapoor

There have been five bids for Anish Kapoor’s Ascension (Red), the last for $4,752. Image: © Anish Kapoor

For the fiftieth anniversary of the Frank Lloyd Wright–designed Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum building, the Guggenheim invited some two hundred artists, architects, and designers to imagine their dream interventions in its central rotunda.

Among the artists participating in the exhibition are Alice Aycock, FAKE DESIGN (Ai Weiwei), Anish Kapoor, Sarah Morris, Wangechi Mutu, Paul Pfeiffer, Doris Salcedo, Lawrence Weiner, and Rachel Whiteread; designers such as Fernando and Humberto Campana, Martí Guixé, and Joris Laarman Studio; and architects such as Álvaro Siza Vieira Arquitecto, BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group), Greg Lynn FORM, MVRDV, N55, Snøhetta, Studio Daniel Libeskind, Toyo Ito & Associates, Architects, and West 8.

Contemplating the Void functions as an anniversary fundraiser for the museum—over 90% of the artists have donated their works to this cause. Proceeds from the sale will support the museum's exhibition programming.

Source: ART INST OF CHICAGO

Dayanita Singh | 'Dream Villa'

GALLERY NATURE MORTE
A1 NEETI BAGH, NEW DELHI 110 049 INDIA
OFFICE: (91) 11- 2956-1596 GALLERY: (91) 11-4174-0215
info@naturemorte.com / www.naturemorte.com

Dayanita Singh: Dream Villa

Opening Friday, January 15th, 2010
Exhibition continues to Saturday, February 13th.

Nature Morte is proud to host an exhibition of new color photographs by the prominent photographer Dayanita Singh. Premiered at the Frith Street Gallery in London in November 2008, the body of work is entitled "Dream Villa." The color photographs explore how the night transforms what seems ordinary by day into something mysterious and magical. These lush images are saturated with intense color and present a landscape which exists as much in the artist's imagination as in the real world. Ms. Singh travels to many different cities to find her images, never knowing where Dream Villa or its inhabitants will present themselves. The empty streets, the arrangements of neon lights and the silent façades have an unsettling and at times sinister atmosphere, this is a place where nothing is quite as it seems – it comes into being at night, when all is lit by artificial light and the moon is just ornamentation.

Surabhi Saraf | PEEL

Peel, Short Excerpt from Surabhi Saraf on Vimeo.

PEEL presents a visual and sonic echo of the present instance: it takes an unexamined moment and gives it life. The transitional motion of going to the fridge to get an ingredient is stretched into the echo of an unforgettable instant, and what emerges is an examination of the subtlety and hidden beauty of that moment.

The work was announced as the winner of Art vs Design organized by http://www.artistswanted.org/ at the New Museum.

Abu Dhabi Art | (Nov 19-22)

Confirming Abu Dhabi’s emergence as a new hub of the art market, around 50 Galleries from the Middle East, Asia, Europe and the United States will present displays at Abu Dhabi Art, including some which will be exhibiting in the Middle East for the first time.

.Indian art on view at the following gallery booths: 1x1, Nature Morte, Pundole and Gallery Ske .

International Patron Committee includes:

Anupam Poddar, from India, is a leading contemporary art collector. Along with his mother Lekha Poddar, he has set up the non-profit Devi Art Foundation in New Delhi; which displays the family´s extensive contemporary art collection from the Indian Sub-continent. He has also been actively involved with the development of Devi Garh - a restored all suite boutique hotel within an 18th century fort place, located outside the city of Udaipur (Rajasthan) India.

Sudobh Gupta, from India, probably his country´s best known contemporary artist. He made his reputation building sculptures out of gleaming pots and pans, the most famous of which is A Very Hungry God, a one-tonne skull.

& H.E. Dr Anwar Gargash, H.E. Abdul Rahman Mohammed Al Owais, Jeff Koons, François Pinault, Norman Foster, Fabrice Bousteau, Hu Hanru, Peter Sloterdijk

I always defy myself: Husain | Part 1

National Gallery of Modern Art New Delhi | नेशनल गैलरी ऑफ़ माडर्न आर्ट न्यू डेल्ही

View of Garet House from by James Baillie Fraser.

NEW DELHI।- The National Gallery of Modern Art in collaboration with the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, presents "Indian Life and Landscape by Western Artists", an exhibition of more than ninety paintings and drawings from the V&A 1790 – 1927, at National Gallery of Modern Art, Jaipur House, New Delhi from October 27, 2009 to December 6, 2009.

The exhibition is a collection from London’s Victoria and Albert Museum which shows rare and interesting watercolors, sketches, aquatints, lithographs and engravings by European artists who visited India between the 18th- and 20th-centuries.

Says Prof Rajeev Lochan, Director, NGMA: “The first visual representations of India by western artists were of imaginary landscapes and settings. They were based on the written accounts of travelers to India from across Europe. It was only after professional European artists began to travel to India that they painted, for the first time, scenes based on direct observation. Their passionate interest in this new and exciting land led to the creation of a comprehensive pictorial record of India, in a visual style familiar to western audiences.”

India’s spectacular architecture, the immense natural beauty of her landscapes, and the great diversity of her people have inspired many artists world over. The exhibition is divided into four sections showcasing the works of various schools of art. The exhibit begins with a ‘Picturesque’ tour of India through dramatic pictures of splendid forts, temples, and palaces. The second section showcases works by amateur artists who were captivated by the landscape and architecture of India. Many of these amateurs were East India Company employees, who transferred to canvas their personal experiences. The third section is dedicated to the Romanticism of Indian art that depicts striking, decorative paintings entirely from the imagination. For instance, on view is a panoramic view of the Taj Mahal, paintings of busy street scenes, majestic princes, and doe-eyed nautch girls. The fourth section, based on realism, documents the social life and people engaged in various professions during that time.

Time Out London with Anish Kapoor